@coff33a,

I know you're a member of the alliance and I don't want to create problems for you, especially given how helpful you've been. But I do want the record to reflect my side of the story. Fair?

I went back through the comment and replies and you are correct, "you did not recommend that I join the alliance or even mention it" ... but here's how I got the idea that you did.

In the comments section of "Two Swords Same Length," you wrote:

"Morning, that lovable rogue @old-guy-photos sent me your way to spread good cheer. Try looking for some of the poetry challenges to get involved with, you could try looking up @lymepoet and also https://steemit.com/thealliance/@nuridin/give-today-event-if-it-s-not-much-short-poem the best thing of course is just get about and comment on other people's work - they will notice you more and some will visit your blog because of it. Have a nice day :-)"

In that same post, you paid for a resteem:

resteembot (48) · 4 days ago
Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
The resteem was paid by @c0ff33a

As you can see, I learned that you were friends with old-guy-photos (who has been my biggest supporter throughout). So, the first thing I did was, as you suggested, start interacting with @lymepoet. We had a lot to connect about so I thought "OK, good advice."

The day before, I had been asking old-guy-photos about pay-for-resteeming services:

[From The Inquisition with @dswigle Part 2 on his feed]

"Paul, quick question: Are any of these pay-to-resteem feeds worth it? I need to get in front of more eyeballs and obtain more Followers, but I'm skeptical that anyone actually reads all the stuff coming out of these feeds. Do you have any experience with them?"

He responds:

"Never used one. I think authentic comments and good content are a good bet. It's kind of hard to find a short cut, but then again I'm kind of old school lol"

I make a lengthy reply not germane to this conversation.

He replies:

"Well I know my buddy @c0ff33a used to get 3 cents but now he gets triple digits. He has mastered upvote bots. I dont use them, but many do."

This whole Steemit think is an its infancy. Were still in beta! We all started just like you did. Heck @c0ff33a quit a time or two lol. This is Facebook 2005. Personally I tell newbies to post one good post then spend 3 days commenting and interacting. Then post again... You got to build a following to see your posts. I am not sure that you can count on this to be more than a fun hobby at this point."

Then you reply:

"Hey, it's my amazing wit and charm that get's me all those upvotes! Paul of course is spot on the best thing you can do to promote your own blog is comment on others - comments are like adverts for yourself and can quickly pull In new followers. Look up the different Discord channels available and get into a community on one of those to share your work further. Safest (and currently silent so no advert comment on your blog) Upvote by is https://smartsteem.com/ they always double what you put in or your money back - not hugely profitable but a little kick can work wonders - I use it alot on struggling accounts I follow - it can take a $0.57 to $2.4 and after that some I have seen grow naturally to $6 or $8. Also try https://steemfollower.com/?r=158 you put 5 upvotes into the system per day and then your own latest posts get shown to be upvoted by others - it's a good way to get a few more upvotes and seen by more people and costs nothing. Good luck my friend @quillfire"

Now all this is useful information for which I'm very appreciative ... but it didn't answer my question about pay-for-steeming bots. But sure enough, you show up the next day and resteem me with a pay-to-resteem bot as mentioned above. While not articulated, I thought you were "giving me advice" (use this one) via demonstration.

As all the advice you'd given so far was so helpful, I looked back at your post and saw, "... you could try looking up @lymepoet and also https://steemit.com/thealliance/@nuridin/give-today-event-if-it-s-not-much-short-poem."

In the first instance, you'd recommended "connecting to a person" (@lymepoet) and so I figured that's what you were doing in the second instance ... "recommending that I "connect to a group of people" (thealliance). As it turns out the hyperlink reference was to a poem and presumably you meant "connect to the poet who wrote the poem." That's not what I understood. And, if you'll notice, I still haven't connected to that poet ... because that's not what I understood you were telling me to do.

In the comments section of my Alliance Application, you said:

"It's quite ironic I was just thinking about you while putting together my weekly vlog - then ping Gina Bot tells me you mentioned me in a new post. It's quite amazing how deep the network on Steemit can grow, meet a few people and suddenly you find many in common with you. Good Luck."

And look how I replied:

"Thanks for the invitation and, of course. for the rapid and generous up-vote. How long does approval usually take?"

Notice "thank you for the invitation" ... I thought you'd invited me to join the alliance.

To which you replied:

"I think the group is very busy right now and has many people lined up wanting to join, I'm just a small low down member so I don't really know the application process but I believe someone will respond to this with an invite to one of the discords servers - so you might want to create an account on discordapp.com"

You didn't say, "Invitation, what invitation?" All along the way, I thought I was doing what you were telling me to do. Prior to your reference to that hyperlink, I'd never heard of the alliance. But I've never heard of almost anything on Steemit. I only figured out how to DM through Discord last night at 3 AM.

A couple comments below yours in that post, @old-guy-photos chimes in:

"I know they are all busy. Of course its volunteers and people are working and Steeming and this. Get your Discord set up. You can do that before they approve you. You will use it for SteemUSA as well. Remember I gave you my user name in a comment...any ways its old-guy-photos#0755"

So, I think OK, he's supporting the process of my joining the alliance too. And as you can see in my Application Post ... I clearly thought he was part of the alliance as I mention him by name and use him as a reference. This, of course, turned out to be wrong, he's not a member.

Notice too the other people I mention in the "How Did You Learn About The Alliance" question in the Application Post ... @prydefoltz, @dswigle and @lymepoet. I thought you, @old-guy-photos and @dswigle were senior members of the organization who were recruiting newbie poets.

At this point, I think only you are a member (still not 100% sure).

So here's the thing: there were lots of misunderstandings. I should have asked more questions to clarify. But there was nothing nefarious in any of it. I, like many of new members, don't know what we're doing. We don't know how anything works, including the spider's web of inter-relationships. It was an honest mistake based upon an honest series of misunderstandings.

My last comment will be about yours: "... what you need to concentrate on is making friends and networking to get your content seen by more users."

That's what I thought I was doing ... making friends and networking ... the alliance is a network and the people I thought were inviting me in, were fast becoming friends.

If you have any further questions, I've figured out how to DM in Discord. I want to make sure we're OK.

[Trying to post at 9:00 AM EST ... bandwidth-frozen (as usual)]